Download or read book The Power of the Machine written by Alf Hornborg and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2001-10-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine—'industrial technomass'—as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.
Download or read book The Power of the Machine written by Alf Hornborg and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2001 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine--"industrial technomass"--as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.
Download or read book Blood in the Machine written by Brian Merchant and published by . This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of what happened the first time machines came for human jobs, when an underground network of 19th century rebels, the Luddites, took up arms against the industrialists that were automating their work--and how it explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech today. The most pressing story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley, Seattle, or even Shenzhen. It begins two hundred years ago in rural England, when working men and women rose up en masse rather than starve at the hands of the factory owners who were using machines to erase and degrade their livelihoods. They organized guerilla raids, smashed those machines, and embarked on full-scale assaults against the wealthy machine owners. They won the support of Lord Byron, inspired Mary Shelley, and enraged the Prince Regent and his bloodthirsty government. Before it was over, much blood would be spilled--of rich and poor, of the invisible and of the powerful. This all-but-forgotten and deeply misunderstood class struggle nearly brought 19th century England to its knees. We live now in the second machine age, when similar fears that big tech is dominating our lives and machines replacing human labor run high. We worry that technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are ousting workers from factories, and artificial intelligence will soon remove drivers from cars. How will this all reshape our economy and the way we live? And what can we do about it? The answers lie in the story of our first machine age, when mechanization first came to British factories at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Intertwined with a lucid examination of our current age, the story of the Luddites, the working-class insurgency that took up arms against automation (at a time when it was punishable by death to break a machine), Blood in the Machine reaches through time and space to tell a story about how technology changed our world--and how it's already changing our future.
Download or read book The Perpetual Motion Machine written by Brittany Ackerman and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by a brother's high school science project--a perpetual motion machine that could save the world-- The Perpetual Motion Machine is a memoir in essays that attempts to save a sibling by depicting the visceral pain that accompanies longing for some past impossibility. The collection has been a science project in its study of memory, in the calculation and plotting of the moments that make up a childhood. The preparation has been "in the field" in that it is built upon the gathering of lived experience; the evidence is photo albums, family interviews, and anecdotes from friends. The project has been one giant experiment--to see if they can all make it out alive.
Download or read book Machine Learning and Data Science in the Power Generation Industry written by Patrick Bangert and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Machine Learning and Data Science in the Power Generation Industry explores current best practices and quantifies the value-add in developing data-oriented computational programs in the power industry, with a particular focus on thoughtfully chosen real-world case studies. It provides a set of realistic pathways for organizations seeking to develop machine learning methods, with a discussion on data selection and curation as well as organizational implementation in terms of staffing and continuing operationalization. It articulates a body of case study–driven best practices, including renewable energy sources, the smart grid, and the finances around spot markets, and forecasting. Provides best practices on how to design and set up ML projects in power systems, including all nontechnological aspects necessary to be successful Explores implementation pathways, explaining key ML algorithms and approaches as well as the choices that must be made, how to make them, what outcomes may be expected, and how the data must be prepared for them Determines the specific data needs for the collection, processing, and operationalization of data within machine learning algorithms for power systems Accompanied by numerous supporting real-world case studies, providing practical evidence of both best practices and potential pitfalls
Download or read book Mind Over Machine written by Hubert Dreyfus and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1986 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human intuition and perception are basic and essential phenomena of consciousness. As such, they will never be replicated by computers. This is the challenging notion of Hubert Dreyfus, Ph. D., archcritic of the artificial intelligence establishment. It's important to emphasize that he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible, only that the current research program is fatally flawed. Instead, he argues that to get a device (or devices) with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being in the world, which would require them to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours. This helps to explain the practical problems in implementing artificial intelligence algorithms.
Download or read book Moths in the Machine written by Daniel Kohanski and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-04-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating look at the computer's brain and the people who designed it, Kohanski assesses the programmer's trade, including the demands, limitations, and challenges of creating computer systems, and defines the important role they play in the modern world. of photos.
Download or read book The Machine written by Lee Fang and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Obama took the oath of office after his historic victory, lobbyists, political hacks, oil tycoons and right-wing politicians had planned his political demise. The massive conservative infrastructure created by business groups beginning in the 1970s would not be sufficient, they concluded: in the age of Obama, something new had to be done. Written by the blogger who was the first to report on the lobbyists who staged the Tea Parties, here is a groundbreaking expose of the plans to make America conservative again.
Download or read book Human Machine written by Paul R. Daugherty and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AI is radically transforming business. Are you ready? Look around you. Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic notion. It's here right now--in software that senses what we need, supply chains that "think" in real time, and robots that respond to changes in their environment. Twenty-first-century pioneer companies are already using AI to innovate and grow fast. The bottom line is this: Businesses that understand how to harness AI can surge ahead. Those that neglect it will fall behind. Which side are you on? In Human + Machine, Accenture leaders Paul R. Daugherty and H. James (Jim) Wilson show that the essence of the AI paradigm shift is the transformation of all business processes within an organization--whether related to breakthrough innovation, everyday customer service, or personal productivity habits. As humans and smart machines collaborate ever more closely, work processes become more fluid and adaptive, enabling companies to change them on the fly--or to completely reimagine them. AI is changing all the rules of how companies operate. Based on the authors' experience and research with 1,500 organizations, the book reveals how companies are using the new rules of AI to leap ahead on innovation and profitability, as well as what you can do to achieve similar results. It describes six entirely new types of hybrid human + machine roles that every company must develop, and it includes a "leader’s guide" with the five crucial principles required to become an AI-fueled business. Human + Machine provides the missing and much-needed management playbook for success in our new age of AI. BOOK PROCEEDS FOR THE AI GENERATION The authors' goal in publishing Human + Machine is to help executives, workers, students and others navigate the changes that AI is making to business and the economy. They believe AI will bring innovations that truly improve the way the world works and lives. However, AI will cause disruption, and many people will need education, training and support to prepare for the newly created jobs. To support this need, the authors are donating the royalties received from the sale of this book to fund education and retraining programs focused on developing fusion skills for the age of artificial intelligence.
Download or read book Your Brain Is a Time Machine The Neuroscience and Physics of Time written by Dean Buonomano and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beautifully written, eloquently reasoned…Mr. Buonomano takes us off and running on an edifying scientific journey." —Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, leading neuroscientist Dean Buonomano embarks on an "immensely engaging" exploration of how time works inside the brain (Barbara Kiser, Nature). The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time, but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological movement and enables "mental time travel"—simulations of future and past events. These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture. This virtuosic work of popular science will lead you to a revelation as strange as it is true: your brain is, at its core, a time machine.
Download or read book The Equality Machine written by Orly Lobel and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF 2022 At a time when AI and digital platforms are under fire, Orly Lobel, a renowned tech policy scholar, defends technology as a powerful tool we can harness to achieve equality and a better future. Much has been written about the challenges tech presents to equality and democracy. But we can either criticize big data and automation or steer it to do better. Lobel makes a compelling argument that while we cannot stop technological development, we can direct its course according to our most fundamental values. With provocative insights in every chapter, Lobel masterfully shows that digital technology frequently has a comparative advantage over humans in detecting discrimination, correcting historical exclusions, subverting long-standing stereotypes, and addressing the world’s thorniest problems: climate, poverty, injustice, literacy, accessibility, speech, health, and safety. Lobel's vivid examples—from labor markets to dating markets—provide powerful evidence for how we can harness technology for good. The book’s incisive analysis and elegant storytelling will change the debate about technology and restore human agency over our values.
Download or read book In the Age of the Smart Machine written by Shoshana Zuboff and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Harvard social scientist documents the pitfalls and promise of computerized technology in business life, warning that advanced information technologies present us with a fateful choice: to continue automation at the risk of robbing workers of gratification and self image, or to informate and empower ordinary working people to make critical and collaborative judgments.
Download or read book The Imagination Machine written by Martin Reeves and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for mining the imagination to find powerful new ways to succeed. We need imagination now more than ever—to find new opportunities, rethink our businesses, and discover paths to growth. Yet too many companies have lost their ability to imagine. What is this mysterious capacity? How does imagination work? And how can organizations keep it alive and harness it in a systematic way? The Imagination Machine answers these questions and more. Drawing on the experience and insights of CEOs across several industries, as well as lessons from neuroscience, computer science, psychology, and philosophy, Martin Reeves of Boston Consulting Group's Henderson Institute and Jack Fuller, an expert in neuroscience, provide a fascinating look into the mechanics of imagination and lay out a process for creating ideas and bringing them to life: The Seduction: How to open yourself up to surprises The Idea: How to generate new ideas The Collision: How to rethink your idea based on real-world feedback The Epidemic: How to spread an evolving idea to others The New Ordinary: How to turn your novel idea into an accepted reality The Encore: How to repeat the process—again and again. Imagination is one of the least understood but most crucial ingredients of success. It's what makes the difference between an incremental change and the kinds of pivots and paradigm shifts that are essential to transformation—especially during a crisis. The Imagination Machine is the guide you need to demystify and operationalize this powerful human capacity, to inject new life into your company, and to head into unknown territory with the right tools at your disposal.
Download or read book Tell the Machine Goodnight written by Katie Williams and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR 2018 KIRKUS PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE "BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS "Sci-fi in its most perfect expression…Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will." —NPR "[Williams’s] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner." – San Francisco Chronicle "Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel." —Refinery29 Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness. Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either. Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.
Download or read book The Doomsday Machine written by Martin Cohen and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, there are over one hundred nuclear reactors operating in our backyards, from Indian Point in New York to Diablo Canyon in California. Proponents claim that nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels, and due to rising energy consumption and the looming threat of global warming, they are pushing for an even greater investment. Here, energy economist Andrew McKillop and social scientist Martin Cohen argue that the nuclear power dream being sold to us is pure fantasy. Debunking the multilayered myth that nuclear energy is cheap, clean, and safe, they demonstrate how landscapes are ravaged in search of the elusive yellowcake to fuel the reactors, and how energy companies and politicians rarely discuss the true costs of nuclear power plants - from the subsidies that build the infrastructure to the unspoken guarantee that the public will pick up the cleanup cost in the event of a meltdown, which can easily top $100 billion dollars.
Download or read book The Twittering Machine written by Richard Seymour and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?
Download or read book Money Machine written by Gary V. Smith and published by AMACOM. This book was released on 2017-06-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at Wall Street wonders Warren Buffet, Benjamin Graham, and other legends and shares how you can utilize their secrets to unimaginable success! It’s time to put your money to work the smart way and stop chasing quick payoffs that never turn out. That seductive stock tip you just overheard? That’s your ticket to flushing your savings down the toilet. The story you saw on a promising new product? Only those who invested before the story came out have any chance of a solid payout. If you want to succeed in the market, you need to learn how to invest based on value, selecting stocks that will continue to enrich you for years to come. By learning the keys to value investing, Money Machine will teach you how to: Judge a stock by the cash it generates Determine the stock’s intrinsic value Use key investment benchmarks such as price-earnings ratio and dividend-price ratio Recognize stock market bubbles and profit from panics Avoid psychological traps that can trip you up Investing in the market doesn’t have to be reckless speculation. Invest in value, not ventures, and find the financial success all those gamblers are still looking for!
